Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

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Now that depends, doesn't it?

I think discussions about AI hype miss a critical factor: there are two groups of people getting swept up in hype. One are the Investors[0]. The other are the Beneficiaries of the technology[1]. AI is over-hyped for the former, but not for the latter.

If AI hype is anything like dotcom boom - or like telecom, or building up railways in the US - well, it sucks for the Investors. For them, the hype is getting dangerous - if it's a bubble and it bursts, plenty of them will lose money, and many companies will fold.

But I'm not in that group, so I don't care.

For me, one of the Beneficiaries, the hype seems totally warranted. The capability is there, the possibilities are enormous, pace of advancement is staggering, and achieving them is realistic. If it takes a few years longer than the Investor group thinks - that's fine with us; it's only a problem for them.

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[0] - In a broad sense, to include both people funding it and people making big investments around the expectations - whether regular investments, or company strategy, or career plans.

[1] - People using it for work and personally, researchers, etc.; also people with defined hopes for the technology; also ultimately everyone who benefits from it when it matures (and possibly builds on top of it).

> If it takes a few years longer than the Investor group thinks - that's fine with us; it's only a problem for them.

It is also for the beneficiaries because price comes into the equation and the longer it takes, the more expensive it will be.

We are currently paying the early-Uber prices at the moment but it's likely not sustainable (or not enough) and we'll see price hikes as soon as vendor lockin is sufficiently set in.

Assuming there remains more than one vendor, where the lock-in? I use Claude 4 via an IDE plug-in and both Claude and the plug-in (and the IDE!) are replaceable.

> It is also for the beneficiaries because price comes into the equation and the longer it takes, the more expensive it will be.

> We are currently paying the early-Uber prices at the moment but it's likely not sustainable (or not enough) and we'll see price hikes as soon as vendor locking is sufficiently set in.

Not so, there are many open-weights models close to the Pareto frontier* just waiting for cheaper RAM. Low-end models I can already run on my laptop.

We only get lock-in if some vendor manages to create an architecture which is both significantly better and secret. Secret not merely against employees moving around and sharing ideas or anonymously leaking things — the labs are known to use AI as part of the model development, while the models themselves are already observed to attempt to leak their own weights in various circumstances.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front

Prices early on matter mostly to the Investors. Benefactors will just wait until the price is right - it's not like they invested themselves into the new thing and are now in a hurry.

I do see the argument, though: delays and resulting prices are in a positive feedback loop. But that's a problem for Benefactors only when it makes the new thing stay economically unviable indefinitely. Otherwise, market will find a way (and hype helps!).

EDIT:

Vendor lock-in is always annoying to Benefactors, but I wouldn't worry too much now. GenAI is not Uber - it actually is sustainable at the current and future quality level. Even as major AI services are subsidized with investor money to some extent (I don't have current numbers on that), it's just the usual, boring case of throwing money at a thing to accelerate its growth, to capture more market than competitors.

Uber's case is special in that the business is fundamentally unsustainable, so it actually amounts to market destruction - burning stupid amounts of investor money let them break into existing markets and gut all local incumbents, but as that money runs out, both passengers and drivers see costs skyrocket while quality of service sinks rapidly sinks, and there is no going back - incumbents all died out or transformed into Uber-like thing, which destroyed the structural efficiencies in the market that built up over decades.

As Benefactors of technological advancement, all we got from Uber was the ability to order a taxi with an app. Doesn't feel like it was worth it.

But GenAI is not Uber.

Good explanation. Thanks.

You're not a beneficiary from AI.

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